


to protect and prosper

by palmsandsunshine



Series: the memories nearly lost - pacrim x daiya [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies), ダイヤのA | Daiya no A | Ace of Diamond
Genre: Angst, Brotherly Love, Brothers, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25909924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palmsandsunshine/pseuds/palmsandsunshine
Summary: There's always been an impenetrable gap between Haruichi and Ryosuke. But Haruichi's tired of being left alone. He's tired of being protected by his brother.Kominato Haruichi | 1 | January 15, Year 7
Relationships: Kominato Haruichi & Kominato Ryousuke
Series: the memories nearly lost - pacrim x daiya [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1875838
Kudos: 10





	to protect and prosper

_January 15, Year 7._

A young teenager glanced up from his homework, spread out in messy piles on the table before her. His father rushed past, looking frazzled as he spoke quickly on the phone.

“Are you going, Papa?”

No answer.

“Papa? Are you leaving again?”

His mother swooped in behind, rolling in two small suitcases. “Yes, sorry, Haruichi.”

“Another business trip?”

Haruichi didn’t even know why he bothered asking. His parents never stayed home long, and when they did they never spent it around him. They avoided him like the plague, using work as an excuse to stay distant.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Where to this time?”

“Kyoto. Then Tokyo.”

“How long?”

“February.”

The minimal answers were a sign that his mother grew more and more tired of the conversation as time went by. Haruichi hummed in recognition and turned back down to his work. “Is Aniki staying here with me, then?”

“You bet I am.”

His brother breezed down the hallway like a breath of fresh air, his tailored PPDC suit jacket tossed over the back of the couch. He slid into the dining table seat next to him, his familiar minty cologne washing over Haruichi and offering a little peace of mind.

“I just finished work for the weekend. I’m all yours, Haruichi.”

Their mother affectionately rolled her eyes and patted the top of Ryosuke’s head. “Ryosuke, don’t let Haruichi burn down the condo. I want my kitchen spotless when we get back.”

Their father still argued on the phone, and their mother needed to coax him out while simultaneously dragging both suitcases behind her. It seemed quite a grand struggle. But then the door shut, leaving a distinct click to echo around the entirety of the penthouse.

“You look happy,” Haruichi observed with critical eyes. “What happened today? Did you ask that person out finally?”

Ryosuke scoffed, undoing his tie and laying it over the dining room table. He always hated having to wear ties. Something about them being too restricting.

“No. Who do you think I am? A playboy Jaeger pilot?”

“Yes, but you’re so much cooler than  _ just _ a Jaeger pilot.”

The Kominatos were famous for their short stature and peculiar colored-hair. But Ryosuke never let that stop him from becoming a top-ranked pilot. Leaving high school early to join the academy, he rose through the ranks and became a certified pilot before the other kids in his grade graduated. His partner was Kuramochi Youichi, an eccentric man who had a habit of showing off his combat skills to unsuspecting little twerps. Together, they piloted Hellion Shortstop, a Mark III agility-based Jaeger with the second-most kills and assists of all five Japanese Jaegers, retired and active. Second only behind the recently-destroyed Tacit Ronin, piloted by the Miyukis.

Haruichi wanted to be as cool as his brother one day.

Ryosuke grinned at the compliment, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms, the perfect picture of cockiness. “You think so?”

“I know so.”

“How cool?”

“Like Kataoka Tesshin cool.” Kataoka had been Ryosuke’s biggest idol growing up… the man who built up the Jaeger program, who rose up the ranks to become Marshall of the Tokyo Shatterdome shortly after his retirement as a test pilot. But now, after working with him for so long, Ryosuke’s admiration hadn’t dulled but had been outdone by his fear of the man.

Ryosuke wrinkled his nose and huffed. “Don’t compare me to him. That man still gives me the creeps.”

“I’m kidding. ‘Cooler than a Jaeger pilot’... let’s stick with that.”

“You could put that on a t-shirt,” Ryosuke mused.

“Or those dumb pilot bomber jackets.”

“You won’t be saying that when you become a Jaeger pilot yourself and get your own bomber jacket,” Ryosuke said playfully, though he reached forward and picked up one of the loose piles of homework sitting on the table. “I mean… look at this! You draw Jaeger logos on your homework for fun.”

He tapped the insignia of Brawler Yukon which was scrawled out along the top corner of Harucchi’s US History homework. The clean pen lines betrayed the practice Haruichi had in drawing the logo.

“I’m only sixteen, Aniki,” Haruichi snatched back the pile, setting it neatly back down on the table. “I need parental permission, and Mama’s never gonna let me go to the academy like she did for you.”

“Yeah,” Ryosuke seemed to think carefully. He always did agree with Mama on that—not letting Haruichi go into the academy. “At the very most, you’d probably be a Jaeger fly.”

Haruichi gasped in mock-horror. “You take that back!”

Ryosuke snickered and dodged his hits, failing miserably when he adjusted the trajectory of his fists each time to compensate. Ryosuke knew it was hopeless to try and dodge yet he still did. Haruichi’s aim had been perfect since the day he began Taekwondo. 

Haruichi’s eyes drifted to the two belts hanging up on the wall. Two black belts: one junior, the other full. Surprisingly, Haruichi had received his junior black belt at a younger age than Ryosuke did. Ryosuke had many skills in which he prevailed over Haruichi but Taekwondo was not one of them, especially since he quit shortly after receiving his junior black belt. 

Haruichi received his junior belt when he was twelve, after seven years of training. A year later, he received the full black belt. 

It was one of his few triumphs over Ryosuke.

“Ouch! Harucchi, when did you get this strong?”

“I got used to beating up your ass all these years, duh!”

Haruichi let loose one last punch and sat back in his chair, finally satisfied. Since his brother became an international superstar, he rarely got to see him, let alone goof off with him.

Of course, he knew it wasn’t his fault. Ryosuke lived and breathed the PPDC. He’d grown up dreaming of slaying dragons and using G.I. Joes and Samurai figurines to kill Godzilla. He wanted to be a hero; like how he protected Haruichi from bullies, or how he helped old ladies cross the road.

“You hit like a girl.” 

Haruichi most definitely did  _ not _ hit like a girl. His years of training could attest to that.

“You’re impossible, Nii-san.”

“Ah, reverting back to honorifics, are we?” He raised an eyebrow, seeing straight through his schemes. “You know that shit doesn’t work on me anymore—“

“It totally does.”

Bubbling giggles escaped his lips as he dodged his brother’s hands, which had reached over to mess up his hair. 

“How long are you staying in Tokyo?”

Ryosuke shrugged, unbuttoning his sleeves and rolling them up his arms neatly. Although he wore the pressed shirts nearly daily, he often complained about the shirts’ unpleasant claustrophobic nature. Especially the tight cuffs. “Ma and Pa are going to visit all their factories until late February. I just got back from a training camp in the States. So I get a short break with you before I have to go back to Chiba and the Shatterdome.”

Haruichi picked up a pencil from the table, bringing the eraser end to his lips and chewing on it. “So… when is that?”

With a frustrated grunt, Ryosuke reached over to smack the pencil out of Haruichi’s mouth. “Don’t do that. It’s unsanitary.”

“It’s unsanitary,” Haruichi mocked in a high pitch voice, rolling his eyes fondly. “Answer the damn question.”

“Hey. Language.”

“You literally just said ‘shit’ earlier! I swear to—”

“Don’t patronize me for my bad habits, only I can do that to you!”

Haruichi missed this; the comfortable moments spent bickering with his favorite person, arguing over trivial things that they wouldn’t remember the next day. Like the only blue cup. Or the last sugar cookie after Christmas. It was a reminder of their youth. The days they fought over the only red crayon in a box, or shoved at one another in the pillowy confines of a blanket fort—the things they were only able to do when their father was out of the country; when they were away from his totalitarian grip. Papa didn’t much appreciate his pillows being mistreated.

Sometimes, in the clouded memories of his youth, Ryosuke and Haruichi would sneak out onto the balcony when the Tokyo smog hadn’t yet heated up to a fever pitch and watch the traffic get progressively worse and worse. They would listen to the sounds of the city with baited breath, the loud symphony of sound that they were born into. Haruichi missed those moments in particular. Especially the sunrises. When they, at four and seven, didn’t yet have any responsibilities to attend to. Just to wake up, eat, and color in the sun with a dull red crayon.

Until the first kaiju attack came and Papa’s business took off to support the need for jaeger tech. Until Ryosuke ran off to be the knight in shining armor he always dreamed of being, to protect the world from danger. Until Haruichi was left alone, at home, with no one to protect him.

“You don’t have to stay here once I leave again,” Ryosuke told him once their bickering came to an end. “Mama would probably let you go to another prefecture. You could find a nice school there until you graduate.”

“I’m not going to leave you,” he said with a hint of finality. Haruichi knew it wasn’t for Ryosuke’s sake, but for his own. How could he live without Ryosuke, the only person who asked him how his English test went, or if he enjoyed the latest movie, or if the weather in Tokyo had the same clouds as the weather in Chiba, or if he wanted to catch the next flight to San Diego to spend some time with him while he was training? How could he live without the last person in his life who cared?

“You’re so hard-headed.”

“Have you met my father? I seem to get it from him,” Haruichi deadpanned.

Ryosuke didn’t see the humor. His lips pressed together into a tight line, and Haruichi could see the thoughts swimming around his head. How he wished to bite back, but refused to.

That’s what made Haruichi and Ryosuke different. Haruichi, gentle and quiet by nature; Ryosuke, protective and confident. Sometimes, people fought. Sometimes, people fight viciously. In the case of Haruichi and Ryosuke—Yin and Yang, fire and ice, polar opposites—when in balance, things were calm.

But when they fought it was like a typhoon washed over the surrounding areas, like an earthquake shaking the ground. The most destruction always happened at the epicenter. Buildings toppled, thrown over their center of gravity. Unbalanced.

“I can’t take care of a kid while I’m working, Haruichi!”

“Is that all you see me as?! A kid? Someone to take care of? Someone who follows you around and gets in the way?”

“That’s not fair, Harucchi.”

“Then what is, Aniki?” He challenged, pushing his chair back and rising to her full, intimidating five feet and four inches. The ground shook with the force of his anger. “You know I can take care of myself. Hell, ever since you stopped needing a babysitter, Papa stopped hiring one for me, too. It’s the two of us, Ryosuke. The two of us against the world. We don’t need Mama or Papa or anyone else if you would just take me to the Shatterdome—”

“I’m not taking you with me!” He burst out, shoving his chair back so that it clattered onto the floor, unbalanced. A shock of lightning burst through Haruichi’s spine. “I’m not going to do that.”

Recoiling from the sudden outburst, Haruichi took a step back. He had never seen Ryosuke so unhinged. “Why not?”

Instead of an answer, Ryosuke stalked away to his room, leaving Haruichi with the echo of the chair still rattling around the wide space and the echo of a strange feeling in his chest.

That was when he knew—he was going to do whatever it took to become a pilot. Whatever his brother was protecting him from, whatever hero complex he had, Haruichi wasn’t going to let it stop him.


End file.
